A woman on TikTok has come forward to share the story of how her likeness was used to create an impostor Instagram porn account.
Celebrities are often the target of impostor online accounts, but what happens when hackers target a regular person? One TikTok user by the name of Heather told her followers how this happened to her and what she did to get herself out of the situation.
“What a time to be alive,” Heather’s caption read on the since-deleted video, in which she explained that she was out with her boyfriend when he received a text from a friend asking if she had recently started a “spicy Instagram account or an OnlyFans.”
Heather said her friend eventually sent over “a screenshot of a very vulgar adult account” with Heather’s pictures, her face, and her full legal name in the bio. Heather said she asked her boyfriend’s friend where he came across the account, and to her horror, he said he received a friend request from the fake account.
After a little investigating of her own, Heather said she discovered that the impostor account was going through her personal Instagram follower list and requesting to follow those people.
“These people would include your friends, your family, your boyfriend’s friends and family, your work colleagues, your business clients from your small business. So you panic,” she said in the clip.
Heather continued that she reported the impostor account to Instagram. Heather said that not only was her claim almost immediately denied, Instagram proceeded to flag her personal account as the fraudulent one and temporarily disabled it.
She then had to use her two other business accounts and enlist a group of close friends to continuously report the fake account, she added. She said she spent the next two weeks trying to regain access to her personal account and get the imposter removed.
Heather’s video was viewed over 1.8 million times before she took it down. Prior to Heather removing the video, many viewers in the comments had plenty to say.
Most notably, a number of other women came forward to share that this had also happened to them. The top comment read, “This literally happened to almost every woman I know a few months ago. It’s been happening A LOT.”
“I went through the same exact thing, I just think it’s crazy how Instagram does not have a real system that deals with it only bots (I was underage),” said another, criticizing how difficult Instagram makes it to resolve issues with impostor accounts.
A number of people, including Heather, believe the fake account was the result of a hack or scam, rather than of a personal nature. When one person asked Heather whether she thought this had been done by someone she knew, Heather said, “I thought that initially, but now I’m thinking it’s just part of this scam. Seems like it happens to most people that this is done to.”
Heather also dedicated a separate response video to answer the all-too-common question of where the hackers allegedly got the nudes from. “Soooo, how did they get the vulgar pictures tho?” asked one comment.
“Let me clear up that these were not ‘noodles’ that were hacked from my phone,” Heather said, referring to the nudes on the impostor’s Instagram account. She said the hackers took photos from her personal Instagram, which happened to have a few non-provocative pictures of her in a bikini.
“Nothing out of the norm,” she said to describe the photos. “But when you edit them, add some text, some graphics, some filters, they were made to look like teaser photos.” She even joked that she wished the body from the fake account was actually her “because she looks better than me.”
A number of women in the comments suggested keeping Instagram accounts private and only accepting follow requests from people you know. Others suggest using the phrase “Only account, no backups” in the bio section. And if you or someone you know is worried about such attacks, the U.S. government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) also provides free courses in which the public can learn and improve their cybersecurity skills.
The Daily Dot has refrained from using Heather’s full name and links to her social media out of respect and privacy for the individual.
The Daily Dot reached out to Heather and to Instagram via email.
